Greek Yield at 2015 Low Shows Investors Sanguine Before Election

ND’s campaign camp has focused chiefly on four areas: deconstructing SYRIZA’s arguments and claims of its achievements while in government; seeking to annul the moral advantage SYRIZA has claimed, chiefly by pointing to the case of a close aide of Tsipras who has been accused of conflict of interest; increasing the pressure on centrist voters to back Meimarakis at the risk of facing another Tsipras administration; and boosting support in regions including Attica, the country’s agricultural belts and Crete where SYRIZA made gains in January’s elections.

Tsipras stepped down on Aug. 20 after eight months in power, announcing new parliamentary elections following the political turmoil resulting from his government’s signing of a third bailout agreement with Greece’s creditors in August.

In his final pre-election speech in Omonia Square, central Athens, on Thursday night, New Democracy leader Evangelos Meimarakis appealed to Greeks to back ND and put an end to “SYRIZA’s unsafe experiment”.

The latest polls have shown Syriza and New Democracy in a tight race for first place.

What the election will do is give smaller parties a chance at more Parliament seats.

The two parties are polling pretty closely, and neither one looks like it will be able to form a government without at least one other party’s help. “There will be no further transfer of funds to Greece unless Greece starts changing basic patterns of the way the pension system works, taxation is enforced, and so on”.

After winning 36.4 percent of the vote in January elections, the party of former premier Alexis Tsipras narrowly failed to secure an absolute majority in parliament. It is taking between 4 to 7 percent in polls.

“I never want you to be prime minister again”, he told Tsipras during a one-on-one televised debate on Monday.

Like many Greeks, Christi Psarra has no illusions about what the country’s third vote in less than a year will bring.

REPEAT PERFORMANCE – Syriza with the Independent Greeks. But with both sharing few common views on the bailout with the formerly stridently anti-austerity Syriza, it would be an uneasy coalition.

Gregor Gysi, a key politician of the German Die Linke party, and the Spanish Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias, as well as Pierre Laurent, head of the French Communist Party, will join Tsipras on stage during his speech, according to the Syriza election center.

The same two parties would likely share power with New Democracy should that party win Sunday’s vote.